"Einstein Revealed"

ANNOUNCER: Tonight, on NOVA, his name is synonymous with genius. Albert
Einstein illuminated the most fundamental scientific truths of his time and
became an international celebrity. But what of the private man behind the
public hero? Newly discovered letters shed light on his bold thought
experiments and forbidden loves. A two hour NOVA special: Einstein
Revealed.

NOVA is funded by Merck.

Merck. Pharmaceutical research. Dedicated to preventing disease and improving
health. Merck. Committed to bringing out the best in medicine.

And by Prudential.

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The Corporation for Public Broadcasting and viewers like you. Additional
funding for this program is provided by the National Science Foundation.

ALBERT EINSTEIN (ACTOR ANDREW SACHS): I was 16 when the image first came to
me. What would it be like to ride a beam of light? At 16, I had no idea, but
the question stayed with me for the next ten years. Simple questions are
always the hardest, but if I have one gift, it is that I am as stubborn as a
mule.

F. MURRAY ABRAHAM (NARRATOR): Albert Einstein once said that he spent his
whole life trying to understand the nature of light. More than any other
scientist, he succeeded. In 1932, Einstein was 53 and at the height of his
fame. But there was another private Einstein whose thoughts and feelings have
only recently come into view.

ALBERT EINSTEIN (ACTOR ANDREW SACHS): My Dear Dolly, How was I able to live
alone before I met you? Without you, I lack self-confidence, passion for work,
enjoyment of life. In short, without you, my life is no life.

F. MURRAY ABRAHAM (NARRATOR): This is the Einstein that we know: the wise old
man, the other-worldly genius. But new revelations from his papers, notebooks
and love letters have finally illuminated the younger man whose discoveries
about light, space and time have transformed our view of the universe. Albert
Einstein was born in 1879 in the south German market town of Ulm, the first
child of upwardly mobile Jewish parents. German Jews had just received the
right to own land, access to higher education and the chance to engage in a
wide range of careers. Albert and his sister, Maja, enjoyed a comfortable
childhood. Pauline Einstein was cultivated and ambitious, with a touch of the
ruthlessness that her son Albert would later exhibit. She encouraged her
husband, Hermann, a featherbed merchant, to pursue new business opportunities,
while he gave the young Albert his first taste of the wonders of science.

ALBERT EINSTEIN (ACTOR ANDREW SACHS): I must have been four or five when my
father showed me a compass. You see the needle always points in one way no
matter how I turn the compass. When I saw this for the first time, the fact
that it behaved in such a fixed way changed my understanding of the world.
Until then, I thought that one thing had to touch another to make it move. But
at that moment, I realized that something deeply hidden had to lie behind
things.

F. MURRAY ABRAHAM (NARRATOR): That mysterious something was called
electromagnetism. Its discovery as a fundamental force of nature was the
greatest breakthrough of 19th century physics. Within decades, it produced a
technological revolution. Throughout Germany, the change from gas lighting to
electricity was in full swing. Hermann Einstein set his sights on this booming
new market, so he moved his family to Munich to manage a factory that
manufactured dynamos. Albert grew up surrounded by electricity, both its
machinery and its mystery.

JURGEN RENN: He was surrounded by people who would love to explain how things
worked to him. He had uncles, there were visitors coming to the family who
would introduce him also into the knowledge connected with the technology. So
he got a very early introduction in what would become the key topics of his
later science. Electromagnetism was the family business, and electromagnetism
became the central topic of Einstein's later research.

F. MURRAY ABRAHAM (NARRATOR): As a boy of ten, Einstein plunged voraciously
into a program of self-education. He read Euclid, taught himself geometry and
immersed himself in every popular book on science he could find. Albert never
minded studies, it was school he hated. He detested the regimentation
characteristic of German education, and of so much of German society. By the
time he reached high school, he dreaded the inevitable sequel: conscription
into the German army. In 1894, his family moved to Italy, leaving Albert alone
in Munich to complete the school year. Overwhelmed by competition in Germany,
Hermann Einstein had shifted his factory to Pavia. Lonely and isolated, Albert
lasted less than a term on his own.

ALBERT EINSTEIN (ACTOR ANDREW SACHS): I hated my school in Munich, the rigid
discipline, the worship of authority, the school masters strutting around like
officers whipping the troops into shape. I searched for a way out until
finally it came to me: The next time the teacher scolded me, I went to my
family doctor and obtained a certificate—It seems I was suffering from ...
nervous exhaustion, and needed to leave immediately!

F. MURRAY ABRAHAM (NARRATOR): He escaped Munich, bound for Italy.

ROBERT SCHULMANN: He probably didn't even announce that he was coming, so I
can see him turning up on the doorstep of his parents in Pavia and saying,
"Well look, I made a go of it in Germany, but don't worry about it, I'm not
going to become a bum. I have a plan and here's what I'm going to do." The
degree of independence for someone at the age of 15 is really astonishing.

F. MURRAY ABRAHAM (NARRATOR): Einstein's plan was to forego high school and
take the entrance exam to the Swiss Polytechnic, one of Europe's top technical
universities. While waiting for his results, he enjoyed an extended break in
Pavia. One of his sister's friends reported that he spent his time walking and
cycling constantly, often daydreaming, always thoughtful. And free of the
demands of school, Albert could learn about electricity first-hand in his
father's factory.

ROBERT SCHULMANN: I think the fact that Einstein could get his hands dirty in
the factory was, is an important thing that's often overlooked. He had in his
father and uncle's factory in Pavia a wonderful laboratory, if you will a
playground. We see the Einstein who is the great theoretician who only needs
his pencil and paper. But working the dynamos certainly had a fascination for
him and was an important element, I think, also in the way Einstein did his
science, which is to visualize how things work.

F. MURRAY ABRAHAM (NARRATOR): But Albert was still a drop out with no high
school diploma and no nationality, for he had renounced German citizenship to
avoid military service. So when he failed the arts portion of the Swiss
University exam, Albert gave in to his father's demands that he complete high
school in the Swiss town of Aarau. It seemed a setback, but as it turned out,
it was here that Einstein first experienced what it might mean to be a
scientist.

ROBERT SCHULMANN: He has this great stroke of luck that he comes into an
excellent school system with a new physics laboratory. So it's the combination
now of some kind of orthodox training combined with the playfulness he's
already exhibited and which isn't stifled in Aarau, that I think makes it such
an important part of his development as a scientist and as a person.

F. MURRAY ABRAHAM (NARRATOR): In the laboratory, Einstein first came to grips
with the physics that lay behind the electrical devices with which he was
already familiar. He hooked compass needles to batteries and wires to prove to
himself the fact discovered earlier in the century that electric currents can
induce magnetic fields, and that the two were both aspects of the same
phenomenon called electromagnetism. With a simple bar magnet, Einstein explored
the patterns formed by a handful of iron filings, swept up by the lines of
force created in a magnetic field. And when he was taught that light itself is
an electromagnetic wave travelling through space, Einstein had found his life's
work.

ALBERT EINSTEIN (ACTOR ANDREW SACHS): That was when it came to me, that image
of riding a beam of light.

F. MURRAY ABRAHAM (NARRATOR): This was the first of Einstein's famous thought
experiments. He created these deceptively simple scenarios to explore the most
complex concepts. If light were a wave, Einstein reasoned, then no matter how
fast it travels, it ought to be possible to catch up to its peaks or valleys.
But then, Einstein wondered, what would he see? Would the light stand still?
Would time stand still? Would he ride that same peak of light forever, a
glimpse of one frozen instant? At 16, Einstein could not find the answers to
his questions. He was not yet a trained scientist, but this he knew was a
puzzle worth his talents. But as his year in Aarau came to an end, he had to
turn his thoughts to practical concerns.

ALBERT EINSTEIN (ACTOR ANDREW SACHS): Now let me see. Oh yes. Yes, here it
is, my final exam essay. My plans for the future. At University, I plan to
study mathematics and physics. I suppose I will become a high school teacher
of the theoretical parts of the sciences. Here are the reasons for my
individual inclination for abstract and mathematical thinking and my lack of
imagination.

F. MURRAY ABRAHAM (NARRATOR): For all that alleged lack of imagination, the
17-year-old posing for his high school graduation photograph displayed an easy
confidence. From Aarau, Einstein enrolled at the ETH, the Federal Polytechnic
in Zurich, one of the leading technical institutes in Europe. Its laboratories
were second to none. Einstein admitted that he could have gotten a first class
education there, but that would have required regular attendance in class. And
Einstein preferred to spend his time at his favorite haunts, including the
Odeon Cafe, which remains largely unchanged to this day.

ALBERT EINSTEIN (ACTOR ANDREW SACHS): It's nothing short of a miracle that the
modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled useful curiosity.
For this delicate plant, aside from stimulation, stands mainly in need of
freedom.

F. MURRAY ABRAHAM (NARRATOR): Einstein would stay in the cafes for hours,
sipping coffee and talking with his classmates, among them, two who would
become lifelong friends: Marcel Grossman and Michele Besso. And there was a
third, the one woman in Einstein's course. She quickly caught his eye.

F. MURRAY ABRAHAM (NARRATOR): Her name was Mileva Maric. She had come from
Hungary to the ETH, one of the few European universities open to women.

FRANCOISE BALIBAR: Being bright at school, she was taught by her teachers to
go further. First she went to a boys school, because of course the boys could
go further than girls at that time. And then, I think she was rather lucky,
because some of her teachers told her that a school was opening in Zurich where
girls were admitted, which was quite unusual at that time.

F. MURRAY ABRAHAM (NARRATOR): At the ETH, Mileva was enrolled in the physics
teaching course, as was Einstein. She projected an air of independence and
intelligence that he found highly appealing.

FRANCOISE BALIBAR: She probably was a kind of realization of a dream for him,
because she was free. She had no family on her back. She had to take care of
herself by herself. In a sense, she was freer than he was.

F. MURRAY ABRAHAM (NARRATOR): Gradually, Albert and Mileva came to feel that
they were two of a kind.

ALBERT EINSTEIN (ACTOR ANDREW SACHS): August, 1899. How closely our mental
and physiological lives are linked. We both understand each other's black
souls so well, not to mention drinking coffee and eating sausages.

F. MURRAY ABRAHAM (NARRATOR): For Einstein, these were the important things in
life: studying with Mileva, walking beside the lake and thinking about
physics, but rarely in school.

ALBERT EINSTEIN (ACTOR ANDREW SACHS): Fortunately, there were only two
examinations which meant for the most part I could do as I pleased. Of course,
it certainly helped to have a friend who attended the lectures faithfully.

F. MURRAY ABRAHAM (NARRATOR): That friend was Marcel Grossman, a brilliant
mathematician who gladly provided Einstein with his notes. But even with
Grossman's help, Einstein did have to attend a few classes. Recent research in
Einstein's papers has produced a portrait of a truly infuriating student.

ROBERT SCHULMANN: We have here his college record and you see something
interesting happening by the third year at the ETH. We have March, 1899, it
says that a reprimand has been issued to Einstein through the administration
because of a lack of a diligence. I think that that's an administrative way of
saying that he was lazy in the physics practicum, in the physics lab. We also
have as an indication of that a very fat one which is almost—Well, it's
essentially the lowest grade he can get. To be fair, he also gets in an
electro-technical lab that same year a six. So certainly he has already
developed that which I think is his hallmark, and that is he turns his
attention and is assiduous in those areas where he wants to, and other areas he
just ignores.

F. MURRAY ABRAHAM (NARRATOR): That kind of confidence, almost arrogance,
brought Einstein into direct conflict with the head of the physics department,
Professor Heinrich Weber.

HEINRICH WEBER: You are a clever boy, Einstein, a clever boy. But you have a
great fault, you never let yourself be told anything.

ALBERT EINSTEIN (ACTOR ANDREW SACHS): Of course I wasn't going to be told
anything by Weber. As far as I could tell, he thought that physics had stopped
seventy years ago. When I came up with experiments of my own, he wouldn't hear
of it. What could I do? Just sit back and hope that Weber didn't know what I
thought of him?

F. MURRAY ABRAHAM (NARRATOR): The experiments Einstein wanted to perform
turned once again on the unsettling problem of light. His image of riding a
beam of light had told him that very odd things must happen at the speed of
light. Einstein's contemporaries focused on the fact that light travels in
waves, which implied that light must move through some type of substance, just
as waves on a lake travel through water.

JULIAN BARBOUR: And there was really one big mystery, that if light was a wave
phenomenon, it must propagate in something, it must be the excitation of
something, the vibrations of something. And they called this something the
ether, and it really was for the 19th century, the foundations of physics.

F. MURRAY ABRAHAM (NARRATOR): The ether, it was thought, filled every corner
of space. The ether was supposed to make light behave itself, to make its
motion conform to everyday experience. In ordinary circumstances, it's easy to
analyze motion. We can measure the speed of the ship relative to the lake. We
can also determine the speed of the sailor crossing the lake, a little faster
than the boat when he walks forward, a little slower than the boat when he
walks back toward the stern. Speed is relative here on Earth. One can add or
subtract velocities depending on which way you move with respect to another
moving object. But the great mystery was, would light behave the same way with
respect to the ether? Would speeds add and subtract where light is concerned?
Several researchers tried to measure the speed of light through the ether,
using the Earth as a whole as the laboratory. The idea was that the Earth
orbits the sun at 20 miles per second, racing through the ether as it goes.
That would set up a wind as the ether rushes past the Earth. And if light
travelling through the ether matched ordinary experience, then a beam of light
moving with the ether wind should move faster than a beam of light struggling
in the opposite direction, against that 20-mile-per-second breeze.
Unfortunately, every attempt to measure such variation in the speed of light
failed. With every experiment, the speed of light remained rock steady,
unchanging in any direction. Einstein would come to dismiss the notion of an
ether long before any other physicist could accept such a radical step. But if
there were no ether, then the message was clear: The speed of light was fixed
and unchanging, an exception to all the laws of motion that govern what happens
here on Earth. It made no sense, but Einstein was in no position to figure it
out. In 1900, he graduated from the ETH, but his battles with Weber cost him
the university job he had expected to receive. And in Pavia, his father's firm
had failed. Einstein desperately needed a job.

ALBERT EINSTEIN (ACTOR ANDREW SACHS): April, 1901. Esteemed Herr Professor
Weiner, Last summer, I completed my studies at Zurich Polytheknicum, and since
I would like to expand the knowledge I acquired, I am taking the liberty of
asking you whether you might need an assistant. Respectfully yours ... Esteemed
Herr Professor Ostwald, Permit me to inquire whether you might have any use for
a mathematical physicist familiar with absolute measure ... Esteemed Herr
Professor Onnis, I have learned through a friend that you have a vacancy for an
assistant. I am taking the liberty ...

F. MURRAY ABRAHAM (NARRATOR): Even Hermann Einstein begged for help for his
son. Esteemed Herr Professor, please forgive a father who is so bold as to
turn to you in the interests of his son. My son feels profoundly unhappy with
his present lack of position and his idea that he is now out of touch becomes
more entrenched everyday. In addition, he is oppressed by the thought that he
is a burden to us, people of modest means. If you could secure him an
assistant's position, my gratitude would know no bounds. Yours, Hermann
Einstein.

ALBERT EINSTEIN (ACTOR ANDREW SACHS): I honored all the physicists from the
North Sea to the southern tip of Italy with an offer of my services. Not one
responded.

F. MURRAY ABRAHAM (NARRATOR): And amidst a growing sense of crisis, Mileva
became another bone of contention.

FRANCOISE BALIBAR: Einstein's parents were very strongly against Albert
marrying Mileva, that she was too independent. I think his mother said that
she is going to be always in her books and not cooking for you or something
like that, mending your socks and saying that she was going to die if he was
going to marry this woman. Maybe she would have died if he had married any
woman, but still, this one obviously was not the right one.

ALBERT EINSTEIN (ACTOR ANDREW SACHS): July, 1900. Dearest Dolly, I promise I
will not tolerate my parents' opposition to you. When you failed your exams, I
went into Mama's room. She asked, "What will become of your little Dolly now?"
"My wife," I told her. She threw herself on the bed. "You are ruining your
future. If she has a child, you will be in a pretty mess." At this, my
patience finally gave out. I denied completely we were living in sin.

F. MURRAY ABRAHAM (NARRATOR): But in the Spring of 1901, Albert and Mileva met
in northern Italy for a romantic interlude. This episode has only recently
come to light with the discovery of the couple's early love letters.

ALBERT EINSTEIN (ACTOR ANDREW SACHS): You sweet little witch, you absolutely
must come to see me in Como. It will cost very little of your time, and will
be a heavenly joy for me. Bring a happy, light heart and a clear head. I
promise you an outing, the likes of which you've never seen.

MILEVA MARIC: I went to Como where a certain person waited for me with open
arms and a pounding heart. We stayed in Como half a day, then visited Villa
Carlotta. How happy I was to have my darling to myself, for myself, especially
because I saw he was equally happy.

F. MURRAY ABRAHAM (NARRATOR): At the Villa Carlotta, the figures of Eros and
Psyche that Albert and Mileva saw still dominate the entrance way. But in
Como, Pauline Einstein's fears would come true. Within weeks, the news reached
Albert. Mileva had become pregnant. For the next several months, Mileva
remained in Zurich to re-take exams she had failed while Albert traveled
throughout Switzerland as a substitute teacher. Desperation began to creep
into their letters.

ALBERT EINSTEIN (ACTOR ANDREW SACHS): Dear Dolly, When you are my dear little
wife, we'll diligently work on our science together so we don't become old
philistines. Everyone but you seems foreign to me as if they were separated by
an invisible wall.

F. MURRAY ABRAHAM (NARRATOR): In the Fall, Einstein found a temporary tutoring
job in Schaffhausen, north of Zurich. By now visibly pregnant, Mileva could
not be seen with him in the same town. She hid at Stein am Rhein, three miles
up the river. Lost amongst the tourists of the famous Rhein Falls near
Schaffhausen, the couple would steal time with each other. The pretense wore
on both of them.

ALBERT EINSTEIN (ACTOR ANDREW SACHS): My dearest Dolly, I don't want to anger
or tease you ever again, only to be an angel all the time. What a nice
illusion. But you'll still love me, won't you, even if I am the same old
rogue?

F. MURRAY ABRAHAM (NARRATOR): Mileva would always have to compete for Albert's
attention.

ALBERT EINSTEIN (ACTOR ANDREW SACHS): Dear Dolly, I have just read the most
marvelous paper on the production of cathode rays by ultraviolet light. I am
filled with such joys that you absolutely must share some of it. By the way,
how are your studies and our little child-to-be?

F. MURRAY ABRAHAM (NARRATOR): Mileva's studies were not going well. She
failed her exams for a second time, which ended her hopes for a scientific
career. She left Switzerland to give birth in her parent's home in Hungary.
The couple could not marry unless Albert got a real job. They had no prospects
until ...

ALBERT EINSTEIN (ACTOR ANDREW SACHS): My dear sweetheart, Yesterday, there was
a letter from Marcel in which he tells me that he takes it for certain that
I'll get the position in Bern. I am dizzy with joy when I think about it, even
happier for you than for myself.

F. MURRAY ABRAHAM (NARRATOR): Einstein immediately rushed to Bern, six months
before his work at the Swiss patent office was to begin.

ALBERT EINSTEIN (ACTOR ANDREW SACHS): February, 1902. My dearest Dolly, It's
delightful here in Bern. The homes are uncommonly clean. I have a large,
beautiful room with a very comfortable sofa. In addition, six upholstered
chairs and three wardrobes. Its plan follows. B is the little bed, G is a
magnificent mirror and J is me, your little Albert.

F. MURRAY ABRAHAM (NARRATOR): In his new home, Einstein resumed the serious
study of physics, while Mileva remained with her parents, and in January, 1902,
gave birth to a daughter named Lieserl, a child whose existence has only
recently come to light.

ROBERT SCHULMANN: Lieserl was discovered in the course of finding the love
letters, the fifty-four letters. And she represented a challenge to Einstein,
I don't think, of a kind that he had never had to face before and which I think
caused him a lot of, caused him a lot of pain. I think it caused Mileva much,
even greater pain.

ALBERT EINSTEIN (ACTOR ANDREW SACHS): Dearest Dolly. Now that you see that it
really is a baby girl as you wished, is she healthy? Does she cry? I love her
so much, and don't even know her yet. All we need to resolve is how to keep
our Lieserl with us. I wouldn't want to have to give her up.

F. MURRAY ABRAHAM (NARRATOR): But as a new Swiss civil servant, Einstein could
not risk a scandal. Keeping the child could have cost him the job that had
been so difficult to get. After months of wrestling with the problem, he and
Mileva made their decision: Lieserl was to be given up.

FRANCOISE BALIBAR: It wasn't cruel, it was just something convenient that many
people did. Einstein and Mileva intended to take the child with them later on
when they could possibly get married or when she had finished school. And this
was a very ordinary plan, I think, at that time.

F. MURRAY ABRAHAM (NARRATOR): In the end, Einstein never saw Lieserl. She
fell ill and all record of her disappears.

ALBERT EINSTEIN (ACTOR ANDREW SACHS): This marked a turning point for me. I
came to understand that I have to disengage from the momentary, from the merely
personal. The essence of a man of my type lies in what I think, not in what I
feel.

F. MURRAY ABRAHAM (NARRATOR): But even Einstein could not simply will his
emotions away. Shortly after Lieserl was born, Hermann Einstein fell ill.
When it became clear that his father was on his deathbed, Albert rushed to
Italy for a final encounter.

ROBERT SCHULMANN: Einstein had a very complicated relationship with his
father. He was the weaker of the two parents. He felt very guilty about
having demanded and received money from the father in the times when the father
had progressively failed in the businesses. He also felt guilty because the
father had proved to be a failure, something that he had set his mind never to
be. On the other hand, he was someone that he loved.

ALBERT EINSTEIN (ACTOR ANDREW SACHS): My father's failures ruined his health.
That's what taught me how cruel life is. The endless chase just to fill our
stomachs. I wanted to be with him at the end. I came into his room and we
talked a little. That's when he relented and gave me permission to marry. But
then he asked me to leave and he turned his face to the wall. He died that day
alone.

ROBERT SCHULMANN: Although Einstein is always pictured as someone who tried to
deny emotions, as he always said, "I tried to get above the only personal,"
this was a very powerful shock to him and something that he perhaps said to
himself would never happen again.

F. MURRAY ABRAHAM (NARRATOR): A few months after Hermann's death, Albert and
Mileva were married in January, 1903. After returning from the wedding supper,
Albert had to wake up his landlord. He had forgotten his key. Einstein now
started at the patent office as probationary technical expert third class. The
job was ideal for the least likely bureaucrat in the Swiss Civil Service.

ROBERT SCHULMANN: While he had to work six days a week at great hours, eight
hours a day, he was able to consolidate the work in such a way that he could
turn to his physics work either on the side or under the table.

ALBERT EINSTEIN (ACTOR ANDREW SACHS): You might not think so, but the patent
office was a far better place for me than the university. Had I become a
lecturer, I would have been forced to produce papers as fast as possible, no
matter how trivial, and it isn't easy to resist that kind of pressure.

F. MURRAY ABRAHAM (NARRATOR): Instead of a university, Einstein and some
friends formed a club, which they mockingly called The Olympia Academy. The
club, often joined by Einstein's college friend, Michele Besso, would take long
walks through the mountains near Bern, discussing set topics in physics and in
the philosophy of science. To outward appearance, Einstein's life now seemed
perfectly settled. Mileva gave birth to their first son, Hans Albert, in 1904.
Einstein had a secure government job, and now his ideas about physics began to
gel. Questions of light and motion, ten years in the asking, suddenly began to
come clear. By 1905, Einstein simply accepted that the speed of light was
absolutely constant everywhere in nature. But that left the problem of motion.
There is no difficulty measuring speed here on Earth. As far as a juggler at
the castle can tell, he is standing still, while his twin on the boat juggles
away at five miles an hour. Meanwhile, the juggler afloat sees it differently.
He stands still while the lake, the shore, and his twin recede at five miles an
hour. That's the principle of relativity, the idea that both jugglers can use
the same laws of physics to describe the motion of the pins. But light is the
wild card. Einstein was convinced that if a beam of light passes both the
juggler at rest and the juggler in motion, each would measure the same speed
for light. But how could that work? What happens to allow both jugglers to
agree on the speed of light? That's when the breakthrough came. Speed is
simply a measure of distance traveled in a unit of time, and Einstein realized
that if the speed of light never changes, then something else must vary. What
if, Einstein asked himself, the speed of light is constant, but the flow of
time is not? It was an instantly radical thought. To everyone but Einstein,
time was absolute, unchanging, the steady beat of the universe. The idea that
the tick of time could waver was exceedingly difficult to accept, even for
Einstein.

ALBERT EINSTEIN (ACTOR ANDREW SACHS): Hard? It took me ten years to get from
my first questions about light to my theory of relativity. I went through all
sorts of nervous conflicts. And after all that, it came to me suddenly. It
was a beautiful day, my friend, Besso and I were out walking. I was doing most
of the talking, I told him that I had been struggling with a question and
needed his help. But as I spoke, the answer came to me. I stopped in
mid-sentence and ran home. The next morning I went to him again. "Thank you,"
I said, "I have completely solved the problem."

F. MURRAY ABRAHAM (NARRATOR): But what a solution, to say that time is not the
same for all of us, that it flows at a different rate for someone moving, than
for someone standing still. Einstein proved it with another paradox. Can we
all agree, he asked, that two events are simultaneous when they occur at
precisely the same time? Actually, no. Einstein staged his thought experiment
alongside a railroad track. Set up two poles, he said, and then measure the
distance between them. Find the midpoint and mark it. Using a right angle
mirror, it is possible to see both poles. Imagine that lightning bolts hit the
two poles at once. The observer beside the track could see them both in his
mirror and would be able to confirm that the two events occur at exactly the
same time. But how would the same event look to an observer on a train? He
also has a two sided mirror. At the instant he reaches the midpoint between
the two poles, lightning strikes again. But the moving observer does not see
the events as simultaneous. He sees the lightning strike the pole that he is
towards first. Light takes time to move from the pole to the mirror, and in
that time, the train travels towards the forward pole. The light has a shorter
distance to cross to reach the mirror. So the two observers, one moving, one
standing still, cannot agree when the lightning bolts hit the poles. That
confirmed what Einstein intuitively grasped. Time is relative.

ALBERT EINSTEIN (ACTOR ANDREW SACHS): There is nothing mysterious or
unreasonable here. All my theory does is show that time flows at different
rates for each of us, but very few believe me when I tell them it's that
simple.

F. MURRAY ABRAHAM (NARRATOR): It took Einstein five weeks to move from his
first insight that time varies, to the finished form of what we now call the
Special Theory of Relativity. His theory showed that the faster you move, the
slower your clock ticks compared to that of a stationary observer.

JULIAN BARBOUR: He immediately realized and says so already in his first
paper, that clocks which are moving relative to me must appear to go slower
from my viewpoint and he even says that if you took a clock around the equator
and you had a clock at the pole of the Earth, the one that went round the
equator would be going slower than the one at the pole. He already said that
in 1905.

F. MURRAY ABRAHAM (NARRATOR): Which means, hard as it may be to believe, that
time actually passes more slowly on the drive to work than it does while
sitting at a desk. In a car traveling at thirty miles an hour, changes in time
and length are imperceptible. But if you could drive at ninety percent of the
speed of light, the effects become striking. You would shrink to forty-four
percent of your usual length, from the point of view of someone watching from
the side. And here, finally, was the answer to Einstein's first question about
light. What would happen if he could ride a beam of light? Nothing, for he
never could. At the speed of light itself, length shrinks to zero and time
stands still.

JULIAN BARBOUR: Which at the first glance seems absolutely crazy, you would
say he's cheating, he can't do it that way. And yet, when you look at it, it
is totally and beautifully consistent and it works, and that was it. That was
the discovery of the special theory of relativity.

F. MURRAY ABRAHAM (NARRATOR): On the thirtieth of June, 1905, Einstein
submitted his new theory to the Annelen Der Physik, the leading German physics
journal, in a paper titled, "On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies." The
paper stood alone. There were no references to earlier work, no footnotes.
Einstein did make one acknowledgement, thanking Michele Besso for listening so
well as he pondered the mystery of relativity. He made no mention of Mileva.
At one time, Einstein and Mileva did seek an intellectual partnership, even on
the problems of light and motion as he made clear in one early letter.

ALBERT EINSTEIN (ACTOR ANDREW SACHS): My dear Kitten, You are and always
remain a shrine for me to which no one has access. I know that of all people
you love me the most and understand me the best. I'd be so happy and proud
when we can bring our work on relative motion to a successful conclusion.

FRANCOISE BALIBAR: The question then is, what was really Mileva's contribution
to special relativity. In my opinion, but this is controversial, she did not
really contribute to it, she was more of a kind of a sounding board, meaning
that she could understand what he was thinking about and even critique his
ideas. But she had no real new idea by her own. You can see that in her
letters, where she never speaks about intellectual matters.

F. MURRAY ABRAHAM (NARRATOR): After two years of married life, house work and
the care of her husband and of their son had transformed Mileva's role. The
couple still seemed content, but as a physicist, Einstein was on his own.

ROBERT SCHULMANN: Those very traits that are exhibited in his science, the
ruthlessness with which he is able to seize upon a problem, the very broad
grasp of the literature and homing in then on what question is important and
what, which questions have to be answered. This same kind of restless,
ruthlessness, if you will, is I think exhibited on the interpersonal side, too,
and it's not a coincidence.

F. MURRAY ABRAHAM (NARRATOR): Throughout 1905, Einstein overflowed with ideas.
Even today it is called the Annus Mirabilis, Einstein's Miracle Year. He
completed breakthrough works on the quantum theory of light, exploring light's
particle nature, and on the existence of the atom. Then, in what was almost an
afterthought, he applied special relativity to mass and energy. And this is
what Einstein found, E=MC2, which means the energy contained in any
object is equal to its mass times the speed of light squared, an enormous
number.

ALBERT EINSTEIN (ACTOR ANDREW SACHS): Every gram of matter contains a
tremendous amount of energy. But if none of that energy escapes, none of that
energy can be observed. It's like a fabulously rich man who never spends
anything. No one can tell how rich he is.

F. MURRAY ABRAHAM (NARRATOR): And if mass contains energy, then energy has
mass. Every second the Earth is struck by four and one-half pounds of
sunlight. But as remarkable as Einstein's discoveries were, the world didn't
seem to notice at first. Who could believe that a 26-year-old patent clerk who
worked on physics in his spare time would alter forever our understanding of
the universe.

ALBERT EINSTEIN (ACTOR ANDREW SACHS): Why was I the one? Normal adults never
stop to think about such concepts as space and time. These are things children
ask about. My secret is I remained a child. I always asked the simplest
questions. I ask them still. All I have tried to do in my life is ask a few
questions. Could God have created the universe any other way, or had he no
choice? And, how would I have made the universe if I had the chance?

F. MURRAY ABRAHAM (NARRATOR): It was Albert Einstein's astounding, almost
arrogant ambition to read the mind of God. And he succeeded time and again,
completely transforming our understanding of space, time and light. But as his
newly published papers revealed, there was a price that he and those closest to
him had to pay for each and every triumph.

ALBERT EINSTEIN (ACTOR ANDREW SACHS): I have learned to isolate myself from
the unpredictability of human relations. Life tends to get clogged up,
especially marriage.

F. MURRAY ABRAHAM (NARRATOR): That conflict between science and human
relations played out across all of Einstein's adult life. In 1905, he and his
wife, Mileva, were living a quiet life in Bern with their infant son. Even
after the publication of "Special Relativity," and the other discoveries of his
miracle year, Einstein remained an examiner at the Swiss patent office.

ALBERT EINSTEIN (ACTOR ANDREW SACHS): January, 1907. Dear friend, I am still
a federal ink piecer, with a decent salary. I work everyday, eight hours at
the patent office, and at least one hour of private lessons. Yet I enjoy it
here, and there is much thinking to be done.

F. MURRAY ABRAHAM (NARRATOR): But in science, Einstein was no longer an
outsider. A growing number of physicists made the pilgrimage to the patent
office. They would trek up to the top floor and ask a smartly dressed young man
to lead them to Dr. Einstein. Einstein later told a friend that he had never
met a real physicist before. His friend responded, "Didn't you look in the
mirror?" But even as his reputation grew, Einstein began to grasp the
limitations of his Special Theory of Relativity. In 1907, Einstein was asked
to summarize everything then known about special relativity for a leading
physics journal. He saw that his theory encompassed all of physics, except for
one crucial gap.

ABRAHAM PAIS: He said to himself, "Now I must see if I can fit into that
framework all of what I can think of, and everything could be fitted.
Mechanics, as it was known, there's a theory of Maxwell, as it was known,
electromagnetic theory, but one thing he couldn't fit in and that was
gravitation.

F. MURRAY ABRAHAM (NARRATOR): Gravity seemed straight forward enough. A pound
of pork, a pound of cherries, or of anything, will move the scales the same
amount because the Earth's gravity pulls on them all in exactly the same way.
Yet what the Earth does to make itself felt by meat, potatoes and us, that no
one knew. Isaac Newton had shown that gravity governs the motion of the solar
system as well. But even Newton's theory could not explain how gravity exerts
its influence throughout the universe. That was the mystery of gravity. How is
it that the heavens stay on track? What is it that orders the universe as a
whole? Einstein, still in his twenties, was chasing the biggest game in
physics, a tremendous gamble as the great Max Planck tried to tell him.

ALBERT EINSTEIN (ACTOR ANDREW SACHS): Max Planck warned me not to work on the
theory of gravity. The problem was too difficult, he said, and even if I
succeeded, no one would believe me. But I took it on anyway, and never worked
so hard in all my life. The first theory of relativity was child's play
compared to the problem of gravitation.

F. MURRAY ABRAHAM (NARRATOR): Gravity is the most democratic phenomenon in the
universe. It treats every object the same, no matter what it is made of, no
matter how big it is. There were no exceptions to give Einstein a place to
start. He had no idea how to approach the problem, until . . .

ALBERT EINSTEIN (ACTOR ANDREW SACHS): Then all of a sudden, it occurred to me.
Der gluckliche gedanke meines Lebens, the happiest thought of my life. If a
man falls from the roof of a house, he will not feel his own weight.

F. MURRAY ABRAHAM (NARRATOR): In another of his thought experiments, Einstein
put the idea this way. He asked, "What if someone were in an elevator when the
cable snapped? He would float, weightless, as he and the elevator both free
fall at the same rate in the Earth's gravitational field. Then, Einstein
changed the scene. What if the passenger were in a rocket ship far from Earth?
He would still float with no gravitational field to hold his feet to the floor.
But what would happen if the rocket began to move? As it accelerates, the
floor of the rocket rises. On its way up, it would catch the passenger, and to
him, it would seem that gravity was holding his feet to the floor. And if
gravity and acceleration feel the same, perhaps they are the same. And there
is no difference between accelerating in outer space or standing in the Earth's
gravitational field, waiting for the elevator door to open. This was classic
Einstein. His contemporaries found this equivalence of acceleration and gravity
interesting. But only he realized that it could serve as the foundation of
what would become a revolutionary new theory of gravity.

MARTIN KLEIN: If I had the opportunity of asking Einstein one question, I
would ask him how he could be so sure of the principles on which he built his
theories, how could he be so sure that the dear Lord require that the
relativity postulate be satisfied throughout nature? How could he be so sure
that the equivalence principle really held everywhere and at all times. And if
he could tell us how he did that, that would be something.

F. MURRAY ABRAHAM (NARRATOR): What we do know is that he did it with ferocious
concentration—to the exclusion of all else—which meant that over time, he
gave less and less attention to one person: his wife, Mileva. When they
courted, he had promised that they would be scientific partners—two against
the world. But Einstein's priorities had changed.

ALBERT EINSTEIN (ACTOR ANDREW SACHS): I am not much good with people, and I am
not a family man. I want my peace. I feel the insignificance of the
individual, and it makes me happy.

F. MURRAY ABRAHAM (NARRATOR): Relations between Einstein and his wife grew
worse when they moved to Prague in 1911. Einstein had been named a full
professor at the German university there, a major step up the professional
ladder. But for Mileva, cloistered in their apartment and with a second son to
care for, Prague felt like exile.

ROBERT SCHULMANN: Mileva felt she was being marginalized. Evermore pushed to
the side, less and less important, when the division of labor between Einstein
and Mileva was that he do the scientific work and she be expected to do the
domestic side of things, I think the pretense that they had tried to maintain
over the years fell apart completely.

FRANCOISE BALIBAR: Just think of it. She had failed in her ambitions. When I
say ambitions, I don't mean ambitious, getting power or something like that,
but becoming a new kind of woman in a world of men. This had completely
failed.

MILEVA EINSTEIN: Not much time remains for his wife. I often ask myself
whether I'm not a person who feels a great deal and suffers because of that. I
am starved for love, and I almost believe wicked science is guilty.

ALBERT EINSTEIN (ACTOR ANDREW SACHS): When I think seriously day and night, I
cannot easily engage in loving chatter—in the same way one can't play the
violin if he has just been working with a large hammer.

F. MURRAY ABRAHAM (NARRATOR): There could be no compromise. Science would
always come first, especially the problem of gravitation. Einstein now asked,
if acceleration and gravity are equivalent, what happens while accelerating
that reveals something new about gravity? Back to his rocket ship, Einstein
resumed his thought experiment. As the rocket accelerates, a ray of light
shining through the window hits the other side at a lower point than it
entered. To a passenger, the light appears to curve. If acceleration can bend
light, then by the equivalence principle, gravity must do the same. It seemed
a crucial clue. But where would it lead?

ALBERT EINSTEIN (ACTOR ANDREW SACHS): Gravity does more than make things fall.
That much was clear. But I still had no idea what it was. My office in Prague
looked out over an asylum. And there were times when I felt a certain kinship
with the inmates. They were the madmen who did not concern themselves with
physics. I was the madman who did.

F. MURRAY ABRAHAM (NARRATOR): The asylum is still there—walls, bars,
inmates, and all. For his part, Einstein was only half-joking. Over the next
five years, gravity became almost his sole obsession. In 1911, the first
Solvay conference in Brussels brought together Europe's most famous physicists.
It was an invitation-only affair. Einstein was the youngest to attend.
Gabrielle Oppenheim's father was rector of the University of Brussels. She is
now 103. But she was 19 when Einstein came to call.

GABRIELLE OPPENHEIM: Well, we had a big soiree, because my father and mother
invited many people. And that day, they were all physicists, because there was
a congress of physics. And my husband said, "That gentleman"—He pointed him
out—"will be one of the greatest of those physicists."

F. MURRAY ABRAHAM (NARRATOR): The former patent clerk now traded ideas with
the likes of Madame Curie, with the great Dutch physicist, Hendrik Lorentz, and
the English atomic scientist, Ernest Rutherford. Even in such company, Einstein
was recognized as first among equals.

GABRIELLE OPPENHEIM: My husband said, "That gentleman, he will be one of the
greatest." So, I gave him one sandwich more. It's true!

F. MURRAY ABRAHAM (NARRATOR): There was one person who missed Einstein's
triumph—Mileva.

MILEVA EINSTEIN: It must have been very interesting. I would have loved only
too well to have listened a little and to have seen all those fine people. It's
been an eternity since we've seen each other. Will you still recognize me?

ALBERT EINSTEIN (ACTOR ANDREW SACHS): October, 1911. En route. My dear
little wife, around one in the morning, I found the ham and immediately
polished it off. The apples also did an infinite amount of good in this
frightful steam bath. Many kisses to you and the children.

F. MURRAY ABRAHAM (NARRATOR): As the months passed, Mileva's isolation
deepened. But the worst shock was still to come. On a visit to Germany,
Einstein a cousin, Elsa Einstein, who came from a town and background similar
to his own. Einstein saw in Elsa a chance for a domestic life free of demands
and conflict.

ROBERT SCHULMANN: He had in Elsa a link to this place. She shared a lot of
the traits that are commonly associated with this, and that he would have
identified with very strongly, a certain kind of unaffected pleasure in the
simple things in life, and enjoyment of food and drink. And I think that she
represented that for him wherever he went, and that sense of place that she
represented went with him.

F. MURRAY ABRAHAM (NARRATOR): Mileva had little chance against Elsa's
uncomplicated appeal. The two cousins began a correspondence that reveals
their growing bond.

ALBERT EINSTEIN (ACTOR ANDREW SACHS): Dear Elsa, Thank you so much for your
letter. There is no book on relativity comprehensible to laymen. But what do
you have a cousin for? If you ever happen to be in Zurich, then we—without my
wife, who is unfortunately very jealous—will take a nice walk, and I will
tell you about those curious things I have discovered. Dear Elsa, Both of us
are poor devils, each shackled to our unrelenting duties. But I must tell you
once again—I love you. I would be so happy to walk just a few steps at your
side. I suffer because I love one at whom I can only look.

F. MURRAY ABRAHAM (NARRATOR): That was it, for a time. In 1912, Einstein
broke with Elsa, and moved to Zurich to teach at the ETH, the federal
polytechnic where he and Mileva had studied. Einstein had been an
undistinguished student. Now, he was coming back as a full professor of
theoretical physics. Here, he embarked on the most intense effort of his life,
renewing his attack on the gravity problem. He started with an idea from a
former teacher, Hermann Minkowski, who had doubts about his troublesome pupil
until he read Einstein's 1905 paper on special relativity.

JULIAN BARBOUR: After Einstein had created the theory of special relativity,
it happened that his old math teacher—whose lectures he'd skipped—looked
at Einstein's papers and said, "Well, I wouldn't have thought he was capable of
this. This is really good."

ALBERT EINSTEIN (ACTOR ANDREW SACHS): Minkowski called me a lazy dog, and
perhaps he was right. But relativity seemed to impress him. I would have felt
some sense of triumph, only then, he translated it into mathematical terms,
whereupon even I couldn't understand my theory.

F. MURRAY ABRAHAM (NARRATOR): Einstein may not have understood it. But to
Minkowski, it was clear: Space and time are fused together into a single,
four-dimensional picture of the world.

MICHIO KAKU: Think of a vast arena, a vast arena where four numbers can record
the unique location of any event. For example, with just three numbers, we can
locate any object in the Universe from the tip of your nose to the farthest
galaxy. Three numbers—length, width, and height—allow us to record the
position of all objects. Now add time, with this fourth dimension, we're able
to record any event in the Universe from the explosion of a star to a hot
Saturday night date.

F. MURRAY ABRAHAM (NARRATOR): Here is one of the most common space time
experiences, meeting a friend on a summer day. This meeting takes place at a
particular location—the intersection of the two paths, and one hopes, at a
precise time: ten minutes past ten. As Minkowski recognized, every event
forms a unique mathematical picture in space time. Here, as the seconds pass,
the man stays in one place in space, but moves continuously through the time
dimension, until his date arrives. As the idea of space time sunk in, Einstein
realized he could go one step beyond.

JULIAN BARBOUR: He had this wonderful piece of work which Minkowski had done
in transforming his own work into the idea of a four-dimensional space time.
But then, Einstein hit on the idea that this wasn't a rigid straight space
time. It must be curved, and it must have variations of curvature within it.

F. MURRAY ABRAHAM (NARRATOR): That was perhaps Einstein's most inspired leap
of logic. He asked, what if the shape of space and time could warp and curve?
What would happen then? His answer: Gravity happens.

MICHIO KAKU: Einstein's brilliant idea, the idea that makes the whole thing
work, was the fact that it is matter, matter and energy which drives the
bending of space and time. Throw a rock into a pond, for example. When you
throw a rock into a pond, ripples start to form. It is the rock which creates
the ripples on the surface of the pond. Therefore, the presence of a rock
creates ripples in space and time that we call gravity.

F. MURRAY ABRAHAM (NARRATOR): Space time without matter is flat. But add a
rock—or a star—and the whole picture changes. The enormous mass of the
star creates a huge dent. Anything that passes close enough will roll down and
around that warp in space time. That's gravity—the straightest path through
the curves in space time created by matter and energy. It was this picture
that showed Einstein how gravity holds the Earth in orbit. The Earth simply
follows the warp in space time created by the sun. Einstein published an early
version of his new theory of gravity in 1913. There were still pieces missing,
but he impressed the one audience that mattered. In that year, Max Planck,
Germany's leading physicist, made the pilgrimage to Zurich with a colleague to
offer Einstein a job in Berlin.

ALBERT EINSTEIN (ACTOR ANDREW SACHS): Planck and Nernst looked me over as if I
were a prize hen. But I didn't know if I could lay another egg. I told them I
needed to think about it and would meet them at the station the next day. If
my answer was no, I would wear a white flower in my lapel. But if the flower
was red, then Berlin it would be.

F. MURRAY ABRAHAM (NARRATOR): It was the climax of a career. Berlin was the
world's leading center for theoretical physics. Without doubt, the former
patent clerk had arrived. But for Mileva, the promise of Berlin held no
attraction. The marriage lay in shambles. The intense concentration on
gravity had eroded all that remained of a family life.

ALBERT EINSTEIN (ACTOR ANDREW SACHS): In my circumstances, I turn towards
science, which raises me up from the valley of tears into the quiet atmosphere,
impersonal, without swearing and yammering.

F. MURRAY ABRAHAM (NARRATOR): By 1913, he and Mileva were completely
estranged, and Einstein resumed contact with Elsa.

ALBERT EINSTEIN (ACTOR ANDREW SACHS): December, 1913. Dear Elsa, It isn't
easy to get a divorce if one does not have any proof of the other party's
guilt. So, I treat my wife as an employee whom I cannot fire. I have my own
bedroom, and avoid being alone with her. But how nice it would be if one of
these days, we could share a small, unassuming household.

F. MURRAY ABRAHAM (NARRATOR): The Einstein family moved to Berlin in April,
1914. In July, after just three months, Mileva gave up. She and her sons
returned to Zurich. It was over.

ALBERT EINSTEIN (ACTOR ANDREW SACHS): It is still a great sorrow to me that I
have been cut off from my sons. I even thought of seeking custody of Hans
Albert, but it was out of the question. Mileva poisoned the minds of both boys
against me. She was impossible to live with, jealous of everyone, everything.
How could I have married her?

F. MURRAY ABRAHAM (NARRATOR): Despite his sense of loss, the harsh truth
remained. Einstein never had much patience for everyday demands—even those
of his sons.

ROBERT SCHULMANN: The demands of the children were something that he felt
badly about rejecting. But he said himself that he was not a good father. I
think that Einstein really wanted to make a go of it in the first marriage.
But one has to be careful, of course, to ask, what was he prepared to sacrifice
to make it work? And there, I think he fails rather miserably.

F. MURRAY ABRAHAM (NARRATOR): Amidst such private turmoil, Einstein faced his
first public moral challenge. In August 1914, World War I began. The war
fever that gripped Germany disgusted Einstein. And when 93 leading academics,
including his friend, Max Planck, issued a manifesto in defense of German
aggression, Einstein helped launch a counter-petition urging peace. It got
three signatures.

ALBERT EINSTEIN (ACTOR ANDREW SACHS): Europe, in all her insanity, has started
something unbelievable. In living through this so-called great epic, I find it
difficult to believe that I belong to such an idiotic, rotten species—the
species that actually boasts of its freedom of will, heroism on command,
senseless violence, and all of the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of
patriotism.

F. MURRAY ABRAHAM (NARRATOR): A pacifist in an armed capital, Einstein lived
and worked in isolation on the outskirts of Berlin. Amidst Europe's folly, he
turned again to his theory of gravity. He faced one last hurdle. He could not
solve the mathematics of curved space time. The problem had stumped him for
three years.

JURGEN RENN: There was not just one flash of insight which brought about
general relativity. Einstein had to cope with the mathematical difficulties.
He had to revise his physical ideas a number of times. And he was ready to
give up at a certain point, desperately.

F. MURRAY ABRAHAM (NARRATOR): Renn and his colleagues in Berlin have been
studying Einstein's notebooks, and Einstein's struggles from 1912 forward leap
off the page.

JURGEN RENN: And here, you see, this is exactly the kind of object that he
wants to isolate. This is the object which would lead him to the classical
theory of gravitation. What you see in these pages is a human drama unfolding,
and a drama that might have had many endings and not only good ones. He was at
times desperate, and you can see on certain of these pages that he turned to a
friend to help him with the mathematics, because he was no longer knowing where
to go.

F. MURRAY ABRAHAM (NARRATOR): Einstein friend was Marcel Grossman, his college
classmate, whose math notes he had once borrowed. Grossman again tutored
Einstein—this time in the complex geometry of curved surfaces.

JURGEN RENN: Grossman, you see, it seems really had he has set him on the
royal road towards the correct solution of 1915.

F. MURRAY ABRAHAM (NARRATOR): Grossman gave Einstein the tool he needed to
complete his analysis of gravity. The missing pieces were falling into place.

JURGEN RENN: I believe it's the first time he has seen it, but it's not the
first time he's looking at these terms, because he has encountered them earlier
on the previous pages. There, he was simply stumbling around without having
all of the mathematical tools he needed. And once he started to speak, so to
say, in this new mathematical language, he achieved results that he first had
to grope to understand. One of the things we can study on the basis of the
notebooks that have survived is actually the correct solution, which three
years later, he would publish triumphantly as the general theory of relativity.
But when he first expressed it in this new language, he didn't understand it
himself.

F. MURRAY ABRAHAM (NARRATOR): It took Einstein three years to master all the
subtleties. By the fall of 1915, he was ready to put the theory to the test.
The orbits of the planets were understood with extraordinary precision—with
one exception. Mercury's orbit shifted slightly, unaccountably, every year.

MARTIN KLEIN: It's a very small number, previously totally unexplained. Now
here on the basis of this theory, which he had invented, out of nothing in a
certain sense, out of his view of how God would have had to make the Universe
to make it right. He is able to calculate this very real, small effect, and get
the right answer. That could give you palpitations.

ABRAHAM PAIS: And I believe at that moment, Einstein said, "I don't care what
the world will say. I am right, because the Lord has told me, calculate the
perihelion motion of Mercury and you will see." And he did! And it came out.

ALBERT EINSTEIN (ACTOR ANDREW SACHS): When I found that my calculations
predicted the motion of mercury exactly, something snapped inside me. The
feeling was so extreme. I couldn't work for days. I was beside myself. In all
my life, I never felt such joy.

F. MURRAY ABRAHAM (NARRATOR): The calculation vindicated Einstein's radical
idea that space time is curved. Mercury, the innermost planet, shifts its
orbit as it travels around the dent in space and time created by the sun's huge
mass. Mass everywhere deforms the space around it. Even light, as Einstein
had recognized years before, must follow all the curves in space and time,
mapping the shape of the Universe as a whole. It is this understanding that
drives the scientific story of creation: the big bang, the expanding Universe,
the structure of galaxies, the great sweep of modern cosmology derives directly
from this single equation. Space and time on the left, matter and energy on
the right—This is the general theory of relativity, Einstein's theory of
gravity.

MICHIO KAKU: General relativity is in a class all by itself. We are just
stunned, even decades later, that he could come out with that theory back in
1916. I would say he was 50 years ahead of his time.

F. MURRAY ABRAHAM (NARRATOR): Eight years of sustained effort took their toll.
Einstein collapsed, near death, in 1917. His illness marked him. This
photograph from 1920 shows the change. He was nursed back to health by his
cousin Elsa. Their relationship had cooled during the war. But now, he needed
her.

ALBERT EINSTEIN (ACTOR ANDREW SACHS): I have gained four pounds since last
summer, thanks to Elsa's good care. She herself cooks everything for me.

F. MURRAY ABRAHAM (NARRATOR): Her influence showed in Einstein's renewed
attention to his appearance. Finally, in 1919, the couple decided to marry.
Einstein's divorce settlement with Mileva revealed characteristic
self-confidence. He promised her the money from his Nobel Prize, despite the
fact that he would not win the award until 1922. Einstein never lacked
self-confidence. But the spring of 1919 was special, even for him. A silent
film explained Einstein's breakthrough to the public, with animation by Max
Fleischer, creator of Betty Boop. General relativity predicted that starlight
passing close to the sun would curve around the warp in space time created by
the sun's mass. That bending of the light would make the star seem to occupy a
new position in the sky to an observer on Earth. This could only be seen
during a total eclipse of the sun. A British expedition traveled to the south
Atlantic in 1919 to photograph an eclipse. It would be the first public test
of Einstein's theory. May 29th dawned overcast over the Atlantic. But then, the
sky cleared and in the shadow of the eclipse, light warped around the sun.
Gravity bends light—exactly as Einstein had predicted.

ALBERT EINSTEIN (ACTOR ANDREW SACHS): What would I have felt if the English
had found nothing? I said at the time, I would feel sorry for the dear Lord.
The theory is correct. For me, general relativity was simply too beautiful to
be false. It was inconceivable that the English would come back proving me
wrong.

F. MURRAY ABRAHAM (NARRATOR): The eclipse results were announced in November.
Literally overnight, Einstein became world famous, the first scientist
celebrity of the 20th century. This was the birth of Einstein the icon, the
embodiment of scientific wisdom—a friendly, incomprehensible sage. In the
aftermath of a devastating war, he was the perfect hero for his day.

ABRAHAM PAIS: The year was 1919. The world was in chaos because the first
world war had ended. Nations were tired. Empires had fallen. And there comes
this little man who says, "I proclaim that there are new laws of the Universe."
It was a historic moment against a background of confusion. It's like Moses
coming down the mountain with the tablets.

F. MURRAY ABRAHAM (NARRATOR): Einstein the German, accepting honors at a
French university, was more than a scientist. He was a symbol of the hope for
peace. No scientist had ever received such public adulation. When Einstein
and fellow superstar Charlie Chaplin crossed paths, the two compared notes.

ALBERT EINSTEIN (ACTOR ANDREW SACHS): With fame, I have become more and more
stupid, which of course, is a very common phenomenon. But you have to take it
all with good humor. Charlie Chaplin had it right. When he and I met, we were
surrounded by people calling our names. "What does it all mean?" I asked him.
"Nothing," he replied.

F. MURRAY ABRAHAM (NARRATOR): Not quite nothing. Einstein did enjoy some of
the pleasures that fame can bring, as he began to step out in Berlin society.
But Einstein's basic style remained unchanged, especially at his country house,
as Peter Plesch, son of Einstein's doctor, recalls.

PETER PLESCH: He never carried a hat when he was out in the sun, when he was
sailing, when he was in the countryside. And if the sun, he thought, got a bit
too strong for him, he would take out his handkerchief and he would proceed to
make a hat for himself by knotting the corners. And this actually is very
interesting, because the turning of the flat surface into a curved surface is
really a very interesting physical phenomenon, since relativity theory has as
one of its ingredients the curvature of space. And the practical device was
very practical, and it worked like that, with the four corners. And that was
his hat.

F. MURRAY ABRAHAM (NARRATOR): Throughout the 1920s, Elsa reveled in her
husband's increasingly prominent position. But Einstein drew sharp lines
between them. They had separate bedrooms. She was not to enter his study. And
Einstein kept company with other, younger women.

ALBERT EINSTEIN (ACTOR ANDREW SACHS): Marriage is the unsuccessful attempt to
make something lasting out of an incident. All marriages are dangerous.

ROBERT SCHULMANN: Einstein had wanted sex without complications. He also
wanted relationships with his closest family members without complications.
The pursuit of ladies, in this context then, is one where the sense of
obligation is at a minimum, but the pursuit of pleasure is maintained. And the
pursuit of the greatest priority, physics, is never in question.

ALBERT EINSTEIN (ACTOR ANDREW SACHS): My friend Besso has lived happily with
the same woman for the whole of his adult life. I failed twice, rather
disgracefully. I can love humanity, it seems, but when it comes to close
personal ties with individual men and women, I am a horse of a single harness,
not cut out for tandem or team work.

F. MURRAY ABRAHAM (NARRATOR): But for important causes, Einstein would break
his solitary rule. After the first world war, he came increasingly to ally
himself with a group he had left behind in childhood: the community of
European Jews. Anti-Semitism was spreading virulently in Germany. Some German
scientists even attacked Einstein himself for what they call his immoral,
"Jewish" physics. In response, Einstein ever more publicly identified himself
as a Jew.

ALBERT EINSTEIN (ACTOR ANDREW SACHS): I am glad that you have given me the
opportunity of expressing to you here my deep sense of gratitude as a man, as a
good European, and as a Jew. I am a Jew, certainly, but not a practicing one.
It was different when I was boy. I was very ferverent. I even sang religious
songs on my way to school. But then, I read my first books on science. So
much for the face of Abraham. And yet, over time, I have come to realize that
behind anything, behind everything is an order that we glimpse only indirectly.
This is religiousness. In this sense, I am a religious man.

F. MURRAY ABRAHAM (NARRATOR): It was Einstein's deep belief in the order of
nature that led him first to ponder the mystery of light, and to arrive at his
special theory of relativity. It led him on to include gravity in his
expanding picture of the Universe. But Einstein's abiding faith that nature
must make sense set him on a collision course with the next great breakthrough
in physics. In 1927, the fifth Solvay conference brought Einstein together
with the leading proponents of the revolutionary theory of quantum mechanics—the description of nature at the very smallest scale. While Einstein had
focused on the large scale structure of the Universe, younger scientists, led
by Werner Heisenberg and Niels Bohr, explored the atom and the tiny building
blocks of energy and matter, called quanta. These young researchers found that
uncertainty and randomness govern the physics of the very small. Einstein
himself had pioneered the study of the quantum, but he loathed the notion that
there was anything uncertain in nature.

ALBERT EINSTEIN (ACTOR ANDREW SACHS): I don't deny that quantum mechanics is
useful, up to a point. But I am convinced that there is a deeper theory that
will replace the uncertainty at the center of it. As I told Niels Bohr, God
does not play dice with the Universe. Unfortunately, I failed to convince him.

F. MURRAY ABRAHAM (NARRATOR): Bohr's reply? Who was Einstein to tell the Lord
what to do?

ABRAHAM PAIS: There's a certain arrogance in the sense that Einstein says,
"God does not play dice." How does he know? And Bohr is, of course, is
entirely right. You can't know what the Lord has up his sleeve.

F. MURRAY ABRAHAM (NARRATOR): Einstein never warmed to quantum mechanics,
despite a lifetime of arguments with Bohr. He had grander ambitions, a theory
that would unify the fundamental forces of nature within a single,
comprehensive picture. Few of his contemporaries thought such a unification
possible. No matter. Einstein had gone his own way before; he would do so
again.

ALBERT EINSTEIN (ACTOR ANDREW SACHS): I have become an obstinate heretic in
the eyes of my colleagues. I am generally regarded as a sort of petrified
object, rendered blind and deaf by the years. I find this role not too
distasteful, as it corresponds very well with my temperament.

MARTIN KLEIN: It was a willed choice on his part to do what he felt only he
could do, because most of physics, most of the physics community wasn't
interested in pursuing his idea of a unified field theory. He felt that it
ought to be done because it could lead to a new foundation for quantum
mechanics. At least, he hoped it would. And he would do it, and if they didn't
like it, well, too bad.

F. MURRAY ABRAHAM (NARRATOR): Unified field theory was what Einstein called
his still unformed idea. It would subsume relativity and quantum mechanics
within a formulation simpler and more comprehensive than either. He would seek
his unified vision for the rest of his life. But alone, in exile. In the late
1920s, the Nazi Party's power grew steadily. By 1932, Adolph Hitler was on the
verge of becoming Germany's dictator. No enemy was safe, especially the most
famous Jew in the world. Einstein himself had already received death threats.
And as he had as a boy, he once again prepared to flee Germany. Leaving was
almost a relief.

ALBERT EINSTEIN (ACTOR ANDREW SACHS): I have never really belonged to any
country or state, to my circle of friends, or even my family. In fact, in my
need to withdraw within myself has increased over the years. My isolation is
often bitter, to be sure, but I have never regretted it. If I am cut off from
the understanding and sympathy of others, I am also independent of their
opinions and prejudices.

F. MURRAY ABRAHAM (NARRATOR): In early 1933, Einstein and Elsa set sail for
the United States. They never returned to Europe.

NEWSREEL INTERVIEWER: What do you think of prohibition, Professor?

MAN: He doesn't drink at all, so he is not interested in this question.
(laughter)

F. MURRAY ABRAHAM (NARRATOR): Einstein never lost the ability to please a
crowd. But his need for solitude brought him to the quiet college town of
Princeton, New Jersey. Einstein settled quickly into a routine, walking every
morning to his office at the Institute for Advanced Study, and returning in the
afternoon to his modest home on Mercer Street. He never learned to drive. In
America, Einstein gave free rein to his eccentric streak. Showing up without
socks for his induction as a citizen of the United States. Einstein always
refused to play the role of the proper professor. This was Einstein, the wise
sprite. But all this good humor masked growing isolation. In 1936, his wife
Elsa died after a brief illness. Einstein wrote to a friend that his
bearishness was accentuated by Elsa's death, who, he said, "was more attached
to human beings than I." Einstein never saw Mileva again. She died in 1949.
His son Eduard, a schizophrenic, remained confined to an asylum in Switzerland
until his death in 1966. His older son, Hans Albert, became a professor of
engineering in California, but saw his father only rarely. The quest for a
unified theory continued. Einstein never found it. But his sense for the
important question remained unsurpassed.

MICHIO KAKU: Some people think that Einstein wasted the last 30 years of his
life chasing after this unified field theory. Well, I believe that we are all
greatly indebted, because Einstein showed us the way. Today, unification is the
name of the game. We have hundreds of physicists now trying to unite the
nuclear force with gravity and electromagnetic force. We are all indebted. We
are all essentially inheriting the mantle that Einstein left for us.

F. MURRAY ABRAHAM (NARRATOR): Einstein passed the war years quietly. His
famous letter to Roosevelt urged nuclear research, but Einstein himself had no
role in building the bomb. After the war, the outside world would seek out
Einstein for views on causes of all sorts. David Ben Gurion even came to
Mercer Street to offer Einstein the presidency of the new State of Israel. To
the relief of both, Einstein declined. Science still came first, even if his
unified theory stubbornly refused to take shape. Finally, in the spring of
1955, Einstein's heart began to fail. He entered the hospital, and then, on
April 15th ...

ABRAHAM PAIS: He called his secretary. He wanted his fountain pen, his
glasses, and his latest piece of notes. And Einstein, of course, knew that his
time was imminent, to go. But he wanted a calculator. And he sat down and
began to calculate. That is a story that makes you shudder. It makes me
shudder. He knew he would not see whatever would come out of these
calculations by way of achievement. It didn't matter to him.

F. MURRAY ABRAHAM (NARRATOR): ... Einstein died just after midnight, April 16,
1955. He was 76. Albert Einstein changed forever our conception of space,
time, the structure of the Universe. To him, that was what truly mattered.
The rest, he said, could be forgotten.

ALBERT EINSTEIN (ACTOR ANDREW SACHS): In my life, I have always sought to gain
just a glimpse of the order that lies hidden in nature. All science requires
faith in the inner harmony of the world. Our longing for understanding is
eternal.

ANNOUNCER: Space. Time. Light. Matter. Learn more about the theories, and
the man that changed our understanding of the Universe. Meet the Einstein you
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